circumstances over which he had little or no control, kills another in a
fit of passion, is not necessarily a dangerous criminal. In the majority
of cases it is fair to assume that such an individual will never again
in his life have to cope with a similar set of circumstances. The great
majority of these people have led, up to that single crime of their
life, an honest, peaceful existence, and the instances of an accidental
criminal turning recidivist are extremely rare.
Society looks on complacently at the repeated sentencing of the habitual
criminal and watches without alarm the never failing phenomenon of how
each successive imprisonment only serves to deprave him more
profoundly; it never considers the danger of letting this type of
criminal loose to prey upon it; just so he has served his just and
legally prescribed sentence. But let the victim of the "insanity dodge"
prejudice endeavor to gain his freedom, and society is at once up in
arms.
Thus the matter stands, and until the public learns to know its
criminals as they actually are, this problem will remain unsolved. The
prognosis of the acute prison psychotic complex is good in the majority
of instances. The removal to a hospital régime usually serves to put a
stop to the process and it is important for the expert witness to bear
this in mind for obvious reasons.
We have thus far discussed the psychoses developing in prisoners
awaiting trial, and we shall now turn to that group of cases which are
sent to us from penal institutions which serve for the confinement of
the convicted criminal.
At the outset we shall endeavor to draw a distinction between the class
of individuals we have just discussed, and that which we are about to
consider now. We have seen that the former is made up of individuals who
in most instances have come in conflict with the law for the first time,
and that the mental disorder which they develop stands in the closest
relation with some definite experience in their life. The patients who
come to us from prisons and penitentiaries on account of some mental
disorder which developed while they were undergoing sentence are in most
instances habitual criminals with a marked criminal career back of them.
They differ so essentially from the preceding group, that what has been
said about the former can hardly apply here.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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